No, I am not dead.

My hobby ate me.

[warning, SCA-ish heavy]

What happened was a) SUN on 11/13/2010 , for which I was teaching (some number of classes which may have been four), so I was busy with getting that ready. Then HSMs went and put myself and the Consort on vigil for the Order of the Laurel, and things kind of got squirrely. There was planning, and more planning, and research and more research, and then sewing, and more sewing (and a certain amount of ripping), and we were a trifle busy. Now that the elevation has happened, I can sort of breathe again. A little.

What I was planning on posting, initially, was the first installment of a 3-part article on 13th century overgarments. Now it's a 4-part, because I wasn't originally planning on including academic garments but since I've now made four of them, I really don't have an excuse not to add them.

A not-entirely-random costumey thing.

In the Italian cotton book (which I forgot to grab this morning so I don't have the exact reference to hand, but if I wait this will continue to not get posted) there is a 13th century German reference to someone complaining about the women wearing brightly-coloured short jackets.

The artistic styles in the time period I recreate are somewhat stylized and frequently quite iconographic such that there are many items of clothing mentioned in accounts and other literature that are not pictured in the manuscripts. And then there's this:

The scan is not the greatest, and it isn't as high-res as I'd like, but if you look carefully, down in the lower right there is a devil wearing a green dagged vest*. It could be padded. Now, this manuscript was made in Castile (it's one of the many Spanish commentaries on the Apocalypse) so there may be no relation at all to the abovementioned German jackets, but it was an interesting discovery nonetheless.

Devils commonly appear dressed in feminine articles of clothing that churchmen preached against, so it's quite probable that there were complaints about that particular fashion.